President Donald Trump has declared his intention to sign an executive order aimed at fundamentally reforming or potentially dismantling the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
During a visit to North Carolina, Trump criticized FEMA’s performance, suggesting that disaster response responsibilities should be shifted to state governments.
This proposal comes as Trump prepares to tour fire-ravaged neighborhoods in Los Angeles, California.
“I’ll also be signing an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA or maybe getting rid of FEMA,” Trump told the reporters during the press conference.
“Frankly, FEMA is not good. I think when you have a problem like this, you want to go. Whether it’s a Democrat or Republican governor, you want to use your state to fix it and not waste time calling FEMA.
“And then FEMA gets here, and they don’t know the area—they’ve never been to the area—and they want to give you rules that you’ve never heard about.
“They want to bring people that aren’t as good as the people you already have. And FEMA has turned out to be a disaster.”
The President didn’t hold back, pointing to numerous examples of FEMA’s failures across the country.
“You could go back a long way; you could go back to Louisiana. You could go back to some of the things that took place in Texas. It turns out to be the state that ends up doing the work. It just complicates it.”
Trump’s proposed overhaul would shift disaster relief responsibilities directly to the states, with federal funding allocated more efficiently.
I think we’re going to recommend that FEMA go away, and we pay directly. We pay a percentage to the state, but the state should fix it.”